New translation settings- from a free lifestyle to an 8-hour in-house translation

If you haven’t been around for some time on your blog page, that can mean two things. One cause is only natural: you’ve run out of ideas. The second cause runs deeper: something has happened, that makes you halt, recollect, gauge and then be ready with the onslaught of impressions and thoughts.

Translators work in different settings- they work while having different lifestyles. Lifestyles they have chosen, having had the chance to choose, and lifestyles imposed or brought on them, having had to opt for them as there was nothing more to choose from, or they had to choose between two options, selecting the one from which they thought could benefit more.

To work in new translation settings – a challenge for the translation provider.

I like to believe that things happen for a reason. You have success, because you have worked for it. Invested time and effort, went through endless ordeals that involved trials and errors to figure out what works and what not (the idea I’m taking from an article published in the New York Times and paraphrasing a bit). This believing arises from an inner need to link certain events to a “benefactor” (let’s call this person as such). Some translator colleagues of mine maintain this belief, too. Good can come out of good. And so it has come.

I ended last year with a light surge in profit (putting it economically speaking). That’s not too important here. What matters is that I have been providing service that draws on the principles I adhere to, and which I still cling to. And they are all made evident on the website- keeping deadlines, delivering exactly that what is promised, fair prices, are not degrading the translator working behind the text and additional value to every client, be it by providing some helpful advice owing to experience in many artistic fields besides translation and otherwise.

So, the road opened for me to make a choice. To enter into new translation settings. I could remain being a freelancer, almost 100% or combine freelancing with an 8-hour job. Although 2017 was drawing to an end, and the business results were good, the Croatian translation market was in a slumber. The orders weren’t coming in with the usual pace as before. If I hadn’t made a move, I would have also most certainly been lulled into sleep. But you can’t wait for the market to call on you.

I decided to make a leap forward, even though this leap was not guaranteed to last long. This was said to me before my accepting the 8-hour job. So, it’s new translation settings for me now. Not in a translation booth (that would be a much too audacious step), but still a leap that made things a whole lot different in business terms.